How to Get "Fired Up & Ready" to Grow Your Business with Marketing and Sales Strategies That Work

Hello and welcome to the Better Life Better Business podcast. I'm your host Shawn Ellis, and we've got another awesome program for you today. If you are a corporate executive, an entrepreneur, business owner, sales professional, marketing professional, really anyone whose job involves growing a business, today's guest is going to help you get fired up and ready to tackle both the challenges and the opportunities of the day. Scott Toland is our guest, and in business, Scott has had his own name and his own money on the line since the age of 16. He's run a full-service marketing and advertising company since 1984, providing clients with strategic business and marketing advice, and you've got him free of charge today. Scott is also a popular conference speaker. He's known for helping audiences get fired up and ready with his brutally honest, no-holds-barred style, always with some good laughs mixed in. And as always, I encourage you now to shut out all the distractions for a few minutes. So silence your cell phone, close those extra tabs in your web browser, and get out your pen and notepad. Take a breath and be on the lookout for that one idea that could transform your business today. Here we go. Well, welcome, Scott. Thank you so much for joining us for the interview today. I'm glad to have you here. And, and for our listeners out there, I know that you hold these Small Business Idea Summits where the, the goal or the promise is that everyone there is going to take something back to their business that they can implement today. And, and my hope is that that's kind of what this session will be today. I know we've got small business owners listening as well as corporate executives and sales and marketing professionals and others. And I know there'll be good stuff in there for all of them, but, um, but that's my hope. And what I know will happen is that people are going to get some great ideas from you today. So, so thank you for sharing your ideas and expertise with us.

Happy to be here.

Great. Well, I know that there are kind of 3 main areas that you help companies, being motivation, marketing, and sales. And I want to touch on all those today and get some of your advice there. But I thought, you know, starting out here, so many of us are overwhelmed, whether it's by just having so much to do, or maybe we just don't know which direction to go. We've got people who are, you know, just burned out and exhausted. So rather than just kind of dump more ideas and things to do on somebody's lap, I thought we'd start with the motivation piece. Now I'd just love to hear from you how You know, how do you get fired up in the midst of these challenges we face? I mean, you personally, but for all of us, how do you advise people? Let's start there.

Well, I think there's two specific things that I say as far as what we go along with being fired up and ready to take on the day. One of those is have a plan for your day. It's really difficult to get yourself motivated to jump up and get going. If there's no plan, if you're just not sure where you're going to start that day, you're not sure what tasks you've laid out for yourself or given yourself a game plan for what it's going to take for you to accomplish each of those things that day and where you hope to end up at the end of the day, you know, it's like that person that sets out on a trip with no map and no idea where their final destination is going to go. They very rarely get there. So we always say to get fired up and ready, first thing you need to do is have a good plan for your day. And the second thing we say is never hit the snooze button. The snooze button is the anti-Fired Up and Ready approach. As soon as you say, "Okay, today is my day and I'm getting up at 5:30 or 6:00 or 6:15 or whatever it is," and boom, the alarm goes off and you hit the snooze button, you've just basically told your day that you're really not ready and you need a little more time. And so we always say, "Have a plan and never hit the snooze button." I like that.

I like that. Great, very practical thing to do. How do you— talking about plans and then knowing that, you know, surprises inevitably come up— how do you handle sticking to your plan while at the same time, you know, being able to face whatever might pop up? How do you balance those two?

Well, the balance comes back to priorities. You know, the best-laid plans, they say, can be derailed quite easily if something something significant comes up and presents itself as either a challenge or an opportunity because sometimes the interruption in your plan is not always something bad. It can be something that's really a great opportunity. So just prioritize and keep some flexibility in there. You have to understand that life does happen and things are gonna happen to that plan. I don't like to say that you can use those as quote reasons because some people will, find reasons, and they like to call them justifiable reasons of why they didn't accomplish what they wanted to accomplish that day. And we don't usually support that excuse. It better be something truly significant, something happened to your child, a business, you know, that you're involved with called and there's an issue or an opportunity, something that absolutely takes 100% of your attention and it takes it right now, meaning that you can't do it in an hour. It has to be done now. It has to interrupt your day and you have to pay attention to it. Other than that, if it's something that just comes along, and a lot of people get distracted by things that are on the peripheral sides of the straight-ahead path to accomplishment that day. So you have to be aware of what the priority is at that moment and be aware of, like I said, what people either will call excuses or we call justifiable reasons for straying from the path of accomplishment. So I think it's just a matter of priorities, really weighing the balance very quickly, not spending an hour debating with yourself, like, what you should be doing right now. It should be pretty clear that you had a game plan to start with, and unless it's something very significant, either a challenge or an opportunity, stick to the game plan.

I like that, and it goes back to, I guess, the idea of taking responsibility for whatever it is that— however you want the day to go, you're in charge ultimately of maybe not what happens, but at least how how you respond to it. And I think of, you know, excuses. It just dawned on me recently that if, you know, if you're making excuses for stuff— I mean, we always hear don't make excuses, but it's— but you're really giving away your power and saying that, you know, the circumstances, conditions, whatever it is, that, that those things are more powerful than you are if you're, you know, letting your day be dictated by them.

Absolutely. If you give up control of your day, you're really giving up control of, you know, what you set out for yourself that day. And in spite of everything that happens to us, we really have to take care of ourselves first. We take care of our mental health, our physical health, and we should be in control of what we do. And when I say that, we're not always in control of what happens, but as they say, we're always in control of how we deal with it. Certainly none of us can predict an extraordinary circumstance that would impact us that day, but we still have control over how we handle it. And how we deal with it. And so I think we have to just always maintain that center in ourselves and be true to ourselves. It says, here's what I set out to do today, here's what's important to me today, and because it's important to me, it's probably going to be important to others that I can assist or influence. And if I get myself off track, then think about the people that are counting on me that will also then be off track, and it's kind of a domino effect. So, you know, we say speed of the leader is speed of the team, and in many cases, the folks that we're visiting with, are business owners, entrepreneurs themselves in charge of their own companies, organizational leaders, community leaders, schools, educators and administrators. We're typically speaking to people who do have that area of responsibility over others. And as soon as you let yourself down, you're going to let the rest of those folks down too.

That's a great point that it's not just all about you, which it's easy for us, I think, to forget about that and get so focused on ourselves. That's a good reminder that there are other people involved too. The company, of course.

Well, those things that happen, you know, when you're on an airplane, they tell you, hey, put your mask on first and then help the others with their oxygen masks. Because if for some reason you don't take care of yourself first, you're not really going to have the ability to help others. So, you know, get yourself handled. It's not a selfish aspect. It's basic survival in business and in life. You know, take care of yourself, make sure you're together that day, physically and mentally, and prepared to do what you need to do. And that's for yourself and your own interest. And then, of course, for the interest of others that you have the responsibility for.

Well said, thank you for that. Well, with going back to your first tip then, to have a plan for the day, let's shift then into marketing and sales and talk about, you know, okay, let's maybe get some ideas here of formulating that plan of things to do, things not to do, because I know you obviously help people get fired up, get on the right track, but the kind of underlying essence of your work is helping people grow their businesses, grow their sales if it's a salesperson, whatever it may be, generate revenue. So talking then about marketing, I know you've been helping companies with marketing strategy for I guess 30 years or so now. Just off the bat there, what do you see that's different today than many years ago, but also what's stayed the same? I'd love to hear your insights on that.

Well, let's start with what's the same. Basically, there are 3 ways that somebody can grow their business. One is to get new customers. Two is to increase the average transaction value of customers you already have. Or 3 is to get customers that you already have to actually do business with you more often. So you're increasing volume over gross revenues. So in those 3 areas, new customers, increasing average daily transactions, or increasing visits from current customers, you have to decide what your low-hanging seeing through. It's very difficult to do all three of those things at once, not only for time and effort but also for money as far as an investment in marketing or external advertising. But once you can determine, you know, where your areas of interest are in growing your business, so are you looking for additional revenue, are you looking for additional sales volume, are you looking for additional market share or sales efficiency, and then you start to think, okay, working backwards, if I'm interested in additional sales, As far as gross revenues, where do I get those gross revenues? Do I convince people that have never done business with me before to come and do business with me, or do I get people that I'm already doing business with to actually spend more in the average transaction, or do I get people that are doing business with me to do business with me more frequently? And so if you can approach it, you know, step by step and understand where you're going here with your business and then choose one of those three things, once that's determined, then you can decide, okay, as far as marketing goes, I can now establish a supporting marketing strategy for one of those three areas that I'm going to focus on to improve my business.

Which goes back to prioritizing then, as far as just what you said, not trying to tackle all three at once. So those are the kind of three things, three ways to grow your business that hasn't changed. What do you see that is different in the marketplace today or in the way that we should go about growing our business, or not growing our business, but in terms of engaging with customers today?

Well, I think the biggest change is that we now have a connected society. It's basically a 4-screen world, from your television to your tablet to your computer to your smartphone. And, you know, if we go back, it doesn't have to go back— you know, too long to find out that a few of those screens didn't exist, you know, 15 or 20 years ago. So, you know, as always growing your business, word of mouth is the most powerful, you know, method to engage others and help promote your business or your service or your products. Word of mouth is not always easy, you know, to get. You can't really buy it. Some people think they can buy it through incentive or reward, but in general, word of mouth comes from the goodwill or good spirit of your efforts or your business, and people then begin to talk about you. It can also be a huge negative impact if for some reason you're a little off track. The negative side is pretty detrimental. But years ago, it was just one person talking to a friend, a neighbor, a relative, or a coworker that would maybe then share that story with someone else, like the old game of telephone. Today, literally, if you have a good experience or a bad experience as a consumer, you can post that experience online and it's instantly visible to hundreds if not thousands of people. So the biggest change that we see today is in the word of mouth category. The social side and the connected side of our world has really impacted whether companies can get off to a great start or they get encumbered by maybe some things and mistakes that they've made. And now that mistake is public knowledge. So I would say the Internet has changed everything that we're doing in our world and it will continue. To be more and more of an impact as we move forward. So it's not like we've seen what the impact of the internet will do to us. It's I think we've seen just a very small scratch of the surface of what's going to happen as far as how we communicate with others, not only in our own organizations, but how we communicate with those we desire to attract to our businesses or our services or our product.

Yeah, you know, I know now there are obviously businesses that are dedicated to helping people and helping companies win, you know, when that negative word of mouth kind of starts spiraling out of control online, helping them kind of address those issues, which I think that says something about the significance of the issue. How do you, thinking as a small business owner here, obviously where we wear a lot of hats, we're already stretched thin as it is, and now all of a sudden we've got to worry about this internet piece and kind of keeping that moving in the right direction. Also, you know, being, being aware of things, potentially negative feedback that's out there. But I know you work with, you know, with a lot of small business owners or entrepreneurs, like you said. How do you advise them on something like that in terms of, you know, just how much of their time and attention to dedicate to that, or maybe how to, how to handle that effectively in the most efficient way?

Well, we basically start with a description of almost like a spider web. The spider weaves a web from the center and then out. So the center meaning home base, you know, take care of what is yours first. So with a storefront or any business, the first thing is to make sure that we have our house in order. There's an old saying that says, "Before you invite company over, clean up your house." What we say is make sure that everything that you had before, whether it's in your storefront or your warehouse, is presented the way you'd always want it to be presented if somebody came to visit you in person. Now what we have is we have a second component, and that's the window into seeing into your business, and that's now your website to start with. So does your website correctly identify you? Does it correctly represent how your business is and how you want your business to be perceived out there. Is it clean? Is it easy to navigate through? Does it have, you know, good and valuable information? And once that website is clean and once you know that that website actually is a very, very good reflection of your business and your associates, your products, your services, everything is there and easy for consumers to access, then we start to worry about disseminating that information beyond the website itself and you start to work with SEO and SEM and social networks. So with SEO, is your website optimized? Does it deliver a relevant experience as far as search goes? Do you have all the right tags and things built into your website so that when someone is on one of the search engines and they're searching for something that is in your categories, that you want matching, does that reflect that? So SEO is basically free. You don't pay for it. You just have to be aware of what's going on. SEM, of course, starts— you start getting into the money and whatever sort of— whether you have a pay-per-click strategy or you have a video pre-roll strategy or you have a display strategy, everything that you do with search engine marketing, SEM, is now going to begin to cost you money. And then the social aspect of it is, are you involved with YouTube? Are you involved with Twitter? Are you involved with— Google and Facebook, etc., etc., etc., Instagram and Pinterest and on and on and on. How aware are you that your customers also use those same tools and how are you projected out there? A lot of it is just the cleanup first and then we can take on one thing at a time by just being more familiar with how each of those tools can be utilized.

Great. Since you're mentioning the SEO, SEM, I know you know, a big part of what you do is helping companies with marketing and even with advertising. What do you see now, knowing, you know, with what we have in terms of online presence and the ability to reach people there, has that changed the way you advise companies on, you know, actual advertising investments as far as that part of their marketing strategy? I'd love to hear your take on that.

Undoubtedly, in most of the worlds that we're working in, you know, electronic media has kind of replaced print. If you just go back as a quick history lesson, the first communication was word of mouth. We can go back to, "The redcoats are coming, the redcoats are coming." Then ultimately we got to printing and disseminating information through pamphlets and newspapers. Then there was the technology of the phone call and we could communicate that way. Here came radio and it was great to be able to hear hear what was going on. But once we put pictures with it with television, television undoubtedly for the last 75 or 80 years has been the most powerful medium of influence in the world until the internet came along. And now certainly the internet has replaced television as the most influential means of communicating with the world. And so we can see via the internet obviously video, but we can also have the communication online. And it's definitely changed because you have to consider now efficiency. And efficiency basically translates in our marketing and sales strategy world into what return on investment are we getting? How many people can we communicate with? How quickly can we disseminate the information? How robust or deep can we make the content? Certainly if you tweet something, you are limited to no video and a certain number of characters. Different than if you were to post a video on YouTube or have something that was on your website as far as video content goes. So we have to see, you know, what are we trying to say? How are we trying to say it? Who are we trying to influence? And what's the best method of teaching people what we want them to know? I think part of that for small businesses is they forget the difference between teaching and telling. And I say to people that have children all the time, if you just tell your kid to do something, you're probably going to have to tell them over and over again. But if you can teach them what you want them to do,, then it's less likely that you're going to have to continue to repeat that same lesson. So when we're looking at disseminating information about, again, our businesses, we want to remember that we should be teaching the consumers or the general public about what we want them to know rather than just telling them what we want them to know, because the more we have to repeat it, the more time it takes, the more money it takes, and the less effective we're going to be overall. So I think it's a matter of just wrapping our brains around what do we want people to know about us and how are we going to teach them. And often that's just through consistency. And a high-frequency delivery of the message in a very similar way.

I like that, that distinguishing between teaching and telling. Do you have just a quick practical example you could give of maybe what teaching looks like compared to telling looks like, just so our listeners can kind of really wrap their minds around that?

Well, if you have your business and you say, say you own a small restaurant and you say, you know, we have the best "Omelets in town." You know, there you go. That would be telling somebody something. "We have the best omelets in town." In essence, there's no substantiating information to back up what we would consider at that point to be a claim. So if we explain that we use only, you know, extra-large, you know, free-range eggs, if we explain that, you know, we use only the freshest ingredients from local farmers markets, We explained that, you know, our cooks make everything to order. You know, basically we don't have any microwaves. It's all custom made. And so you get people involved in the process of the efforts that you make to prepare that particular omelet rather than just a claim. I saw a great ad years and years ago, and it was a big ad in a newspaper when people still read newspapers. And it was a very small piece of copy in the middle of this full-page ad that said, we're not open for lunch. It takes us all day to prepare dinner. Wow. And just with a simple statement like that, it showed that, wow, somebody there is pretty committed to making sure dinner's going to be great. So they're not going to waste time on lunch. So, you know, you can tell somebody something about you or your products or services, or you can teach them and you can educate them about why you're in that position and why you lay claim to that specific positioning statement in your market. And so teaching is always better than telling. Teaching is going to take you a little time. You know, you can tell a 3-year-old, "Hey, tie your shoes." But if you sit down on the floor with them and repeat the action, teach them to tie their shoes over and over again and understand that they're not going to get it right the first time, but spend, you know, days or weeks, you know, going through those motions and letting them understand what's important, you'll never have to tell them again. But if you just simply were to say, you know, "Do this, do this," and the effort wasn't made to educate, you're going to repeat that request a lot of times before there's ever some success. And unfortunately, before success will come, a lot of frustration on both parties' sides. And frustration in a workplace or in a consumer interaction is never good.

Yeah, so teaching is a— sounds like the way you're describing— a more engaging experience from the customer side.

It's all about engagement, absolutely. We need to make sure that we have relevant content in any exchange, and we have to have credible engagement. And those two sets of words, those four words, we believe are the most powerful words today in any interaction. Basically, no doubt on the internet. If you don't have relevant content as it would relate to anyone's search, you're never going to be found. And secondly, once they find you, if you don't have a source or method or strategy for credible engagement, the way the consumer wants to be engaged with, then you're out. So even if they found you, if you can't credibly engage with them, you're out again. That would apply in any personal conversation you have meeting anyone on the street or in a social environment. You want to have relevant content to whatever conversation is being had. And you want to have credible engagement. You want to be seen as the person that's bringing something to the table or the conversation will end. And you would walk away from somebody at a party who was completely unengaged with what we were talking about a minute ago. And you'd want to walk away from somebody that you just didn't think brought anything to the table credibly. And we're going to walk away from those in a social situation. We're going to walk away from those, you know, in the brick-and-mortar experience, you know, face-to-face. And we're going to definitely walk away from any internet connection or social connection if we don't have something that's relevant to us, something that resonates to us in our own lives. And something that we feel is credible that we can rely on to explore the situation further.

Great advice, Scott. Thank you. Well, to shift gears then into sales, I'm guessing that this is a natural segue then. If, you know, if you're doing marketing in a certain way and teaching versus telling, then once somebody comes to engage with you in the sales process, they're, you know, if your sales process isn't consistent with the way you've been marketing, then there's probably going to be a disconnect there. And I know a big part of your sales strategy, or just business strategy as a whole, is a customer-focused approach. Can you talk then about how shifting from marketing to sales— we get somebody interested in our business, now how do we convert them into a customer? What's the process you advocate for that?

Well, you know, an old saying says, if you're gonna sell, build. Bill buys, you have to see things through Bill's eyes. And so many times that we're meeting with small businesses or large businesses, many corporations as well, tend to do what we call inside-out sales or inside-out marketing. And that's that they determine what product they need to sell and to whom they need to sell it and when they need to sell it and how much they need to sell it for and then how that product will be delivered and they come up with all these things internally and set their expectations and goals on those particular inner-driven, you know, tasks and inner-driven outcomes that they're hoping for. And they forget completely that whether they believe this is going to happen or not is going to be completely determined by the outside, by the consumer. If you think you have the best plan you have the best product or the best service or the best price, and the consumers don't think that, then it doesn't really matter what you think. So, you know, a lot of times it's a bitter pill for business owners who have a lot invested to think that their opinion doesn't matter. But realistically, only the opinion of the consumer matters. So what we say is we need to do outside-in marketing. We need to know what the consumer wants or what the end user of your product or service wants. We need to know where is— where it's available to them in the marketplace. So in essence, have a competitive analysis. If somebody's going to buy something from you, where else could they buy it? What's the differentiator between your product or price or service than from those folks that you're competing with? And then what's what we call, you know, the first thing you have to have is you have to have awareness in the market. Are people aware of your product or service? From awareness becomes familiarity. Once they're aware of you, then you need to work on familiarity. What do they know about you? This is where that teaching process comes in. From familiarity, people can get comfortable. And so there is that credible engagement. Once they are aware of you, you've made them familiar with you, you've started to get them comfortable with you through education. Now all of a sudden there's a comfort level or a confidence level. Once we've gotten that person to a level of confidence, We can have credible engagement. No one is going to engage with you if they are not aware of you, familiar with you, or confident in you. So those 3 steps have to take place. Then we have the credible engagement. We decide how that's going to take place. Will it be in person? Will it be online? Will it be over the phone? And then we get that credible engagement to a level that we can create a desire. And the desire can be created a lot of ways, whether it's pain or gain, you know, things that, The consumer may be missing right now without the product is pain and gain, the things that they can add to their current experience if they use your product. And then the last stage of that is going to be a specific call to action. You know, what's the next stage of engagement? So we take all businesses whether they're a small business with a few employees to big corporations through the stages of awareness, familiarity, confidence, and gain. Desire, and then a call to action. And if every person that is engaged in marketing or sales will follow those steps, they'll lead themselves down the road of success much faster than if they, you know, if they vary from that specific line of, of a plan.

Yeah, I love that step-by-step process. I've never heard it presented in exactly that way. And since you mentioned it, I'd like to pause for a minute now just to talk about how you do help companies, because my hope is that people will— obviously you've just given them your, your process right there, but for those who are listening who are thinking, you know, geez, I need more help with this, I'd like to get more help, obviously you speak, but, but just tell us a little bit about if somebody does want more help from you, how you can engage with a company.

Well, we engage at any level. Obviously, to be good at marketing, you have to be good at sales, and to be good at sales, you have to be good at marketing. Those things are critical. Leadership is also a key, as I said many times. Speed of leader, speed of team. Not my quote, but definitely one of my favorite quotes. And if we can identify what our leadership skills are and, you know, who the people are that we're going to be leading, that's another critical factor. And then, of course, Getting fired up and ready falls into the motivational side. How do we give people a plan each day? How do we give them good and attainable goals, and also goals that require a stretch? I say to people, if you hit every goal that you've ever set, then you're not hitting your goals high enough. We can't be afraid to fail. If we're achieving everything that we set out to do, then we're just not stretching ourselves far enough. The greatest leaders and greatest inventors and greatest business people and politicians, if you'd say, physicians, research people in our history have all not been afraid to take risks. And if you look at them, probably most of them have failed more than they have succeeded. The greatest baseball players in history still strike out or ground out or fly out 2/3 of the time. So we have to make sure that we keep things in perspective, but we have to have some really specific direction when we start out every day. So engaging with you know, like I said, big businesses or small businesses usually starts with what we call mirroring. And mirroring would be, and I suggest this is the most valuable tool any business owner can buy themselves on day one, is go buy yourself a mirror. That mirror will reflect who you are, and it's, you know, you in the mirror. It's one-on-one. You need to be honest with yourself. Who are you, and what do you want, and what are you willing to you give up to get there. And then if you flip that mirror around and you face that mirror out, and your mirror then is reflecting back to you, what does your business look like? What do your products look like? What do your people look like? What do your priorities look like? You know, what does your status in the community look like? What's your position in the community look like? It's great to reflect on everything that you've got at hand. There's an old thing that says, you know, you'll never be able to get to a destination unless you can first determine the point of, where you're leaving from. You know, we could say, hey, you know, I'll give you $1 million if you get to, you know, if we'll have a race to my mom's house. Well, if you don't know where you're starting from and you don't know where my mom lives, you're never going to get there in spite of the million-dollar incentive. So first thing is identifying where do we start from and have that be a true reflection of where we start. I've met many business owners that have said, well, here's where my business is and here's where I want to go. And when we get into the business and we really break it down, where they said they were often is where they did think they were, but it's really nowhere near where they actually were. So then we have to reassess once we've repositioned where they really truly are versus where they thought they were. Do they still want to go to that original destination, or because we're now starting from a different point, do we have to adjust the destination? And that's the first place we start with every business.

Good. Well, thanks for giving some insight on that because I just, I know for those who are listening, again, that for someone who wants, wants more help from you, I just want to give you a chance to talk a little bit about that because obviously this is exactly what you, what you do for, for companies and organization. Well, back to the, to the sales process then, and just to selling in general. I'd love, before we go, just to kind of maybe give you a chance here to help people that are, you know, sitting there right now thinking, okay, let me examine my business in a, in a quick sort of way. Obviously, you just kind of outlined a bigger process that you can help them through, but if they want to look at their sales and marketing and think, are we, you know, is this a customer-focused approach? Are we doing the right things? What is your kind of, you know, advice, I guess, in a nutshell for someone who's listening that can take their business up a notch today? What is a simple thing they could do today?

The simple thing is improve their own personal interaction with the people that they're attempting to sell something to. You know, people will blame the product that they have. Maybe it's not the best in the market, or they'll blame the price, you know, maybe it's not the best price, or the service, maybe, you know, our customer service or delivery process of the product isn't the best, and therefore we're handicapped. And that's not the case at all. The case that we make for almost all successful business people is the interaction that they have with the person they're attempting to sell something to? Are they meeting that person's or exceeding that person's expectations? Again, it comes back to relevant content and credible engagement. If you thought that it was always price or product or service that was going to get you the deal, then only the people with the best product, best price, or best service would ever get the deal. And more often than not across the country and the world, it's not the price, the product, or the service. It's the relationship that you have with the end user. What have you done to make sure that that experience is great? What have you done to make sure that you're getting all the information and making that person feel comfortable? And it goes back to, again, did you create awareness for your product? Did you build familiarity? Did you help them gain confidence? And now can you create desire? And then ultimately, what's the call to action? In this particular case would be a final transaction. So it all goes back to the same point, and it's really that personal commitment. Are you personally committed to establishing a clear communication and a good relationship with the people that you intend to sell something to? Those people that are very good and have those interpersonal skills will beat the people that have maybe a better product or better price every single time.

Well said. And I would add to that, that those of you who are listening, if If you've been listening this long, then obviously you've just got this advice from Scott. You're already positioned to step ahead of your competitors because you've obviously just got this advice. And like you said, Scott, it's not about having the best product, best of whatever. It's doing the right thing, if I could try to sum that up.

Well, I really think we have to look at everything, you know, from the outside in. We have to understand, you know, what's the world around us doing? You know, what are our competitors doing? What are the consumers doing? What are our, you know, arch rivals across town that have maybe a stronger sales force or they've been in business longer than we have? You know, what are they doing? And we don't take a reactionary or defensive position based on understanding what they're doing. When we know what others are doing or what they're seeking, what they want, then we create a positive an offensive strategy, an offensive move that says, here's where we feel most comfortable. The other thing is people try and be everything to everyone, and it's very, very hard to do. It is, in fact, I'd say probably the most difficult thing that I have to overcome with businesses when I first meet them is to get them to shrink, you know, the front that they're fighting wars on. You know, so many people are, well, we have to do this, and I need this business, and I need this business, and I need this, and I got to do this, and I can't forget about this, I have some aged inventory, we have to do this, and we have to— and I say, wow, you know, you just put so many things on your plate that you'll never be able to digest all of those in any, you know, specific time. And if we take a look at the circus performer that has those tall poles and spins the plates on the poles, if he just has one pole and one plate to spin, he can keep that plate spinning on that pole for an awful long time. Where he starts to have the problems is when he adds the 5th or the 7th or the 10th pole and the plates begin to crash. So we have to grow. We have to stretch. But if we get ourselves to the point that we can't keep track of the spinning plates, we're going to hurt ourselves more than we're going to help ourselves by expanding.

That's great. That takes us right back to where we started about having a plan and how do we deal with the overwhelm and just as you said, simplifying, scaling down, focusing. Creating that plan of action. So Scott, I want to just thank you again for, for sharing your advice today, your expertise. This has been— I've enjoyed this myself. I've taken some notes as we've been speaking. I know those who are listening have done the same, I'm sure. So for those of you who are listening, if you'd like more from Scott, you can find him here at thespeakersgroup.com, but you can also visit his website Scott Toland.com. You can watch some of his short videos there. You can learn more about his services and, and how he can help your business. And I encourage you by all means to reach out to him. But Scott, just again, thank you.

Shawn, start out every day fired up and ready and never hit that snooze button.

I love it. Will do, Scott. Thanks for listening to the Better Life, Better Business podcast. Make sure you get our next episode by subscribing for free at betterlifebetterbusiness.com/subscribe. When you sign up, you'll also get a free copy of our Good Advice ebook compilation with contributions from over 25 top thought leaders like Jack Canfield, Marcus Buckingham, Chris Brogan, and more. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.